His question reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to write about for some time: all the Stinger missiles we gave to the Afghan resistance during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

We heard all about these, especially right before the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Reagan used them to create al Qaeda, and therefore was responsible for 9/11 is usually how the story was told.

Anyway, I’m wondering if any of those Stingers have even been known to be used for something besides shooting at Soviet invaders? Have terrorists ever fired at anyone with one to our knowledge? Did our military ever get shot at by any? Ever?

I don’t recall ever hearing about it, and I’m pretty sure that it would be all over the news if it ever happened.

I recall that the launchers had some sort of special battery that gave the unit a limited shelf life, but that doesn’t seem terribly reliable to me. Or it at least seems that someone clever could find a workaround.

Does anyone know if any have ever turned up? (Well, besides the one that was fired at the Pentagon on 9/11 and then called a plane in order to frame Islamic extremists for the Zionist/Cheney cabal and their puppets. We all know about that one…)

No stinger missles have ever been used for unauthorized purposes to this date, and to the U.S. governments knowledge. They are extremely expensive, and availability is much less(on the black market) than the similar (and slightly less capable) SA-7 or SA-9 Russian(or formerly Soviet) missles. They are much cheaper, and the Soviet Union shipped them to pretty much everybody by the boxcar. The only missle that’s cheaper is an unguided RPG-7 or -8. There’s tons (literally) of those lying around.

Also, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the CIA supplied ones changed the IFF circuit from a ‘suggestion’ to a safety. As in, if you do an IFF query, it won’t shoot, and if it comes back ‘Friend’, it won’t shoot (instead of just complaining about shooting.)

I have no links to back this up, but considering the time the stinger was built, battery technology was still low, and the batteries will have lost any usefulness by now. BUT.. You give me a stinger and a different battery, a soldering kit, etc. and I believe I could possibly get a stinger to work again. Understandably one would have to get the blueprints, or a lot of balls to mess with the electronics of a missile. I guess not worth the risk when access to russian manpads is easy.